Forex Trading: The Most Common Flaws

Flaws due to multi indicators and due to the principle of confluence:

Many traders are very much attracted to the sophistication offered by the multi indicators and use them in their forex trading systems. Many of the confluence system indicators show the price movement and in no way adds any value to the trade. Due to this, the traders either end up over bought or over sold technical indicators like the stochastic, momentum indicators, candle stick chart pattern recognition, Bollinger band breaks out even neural networks which are supposed to be artificial intelligent systems. The technical indicators just show signals which are similar to buy or sell or hold, making the signal generated to be correct. Theoretically it sounds good but in reality to arrive at a conclusion might be difficult. As a result the traders are confused in making a right decision. They either enter too late or too early or remain still without being able to make a decision to enter the market. The major flaw is due to the use of useless trading system which does not serve the purpose to make profits, but confuses the traders and complicates the forex trading until the trader loses.

Another dangerous flaw found in forex trading is of an emotional nature interwoven into the process. It is fear and greed of the trader. A profitable forex trade can lead to exuberance and over joy, but this is the time when greed comes in and crosses the aspects of risk management. When a trader is hooked to winning, out of greed he over-rides all aspects to see more and more profits, only to see them crash to earth. They wait for the prices to regain, but in dismay may some time and with worst possible losses. This is the time when fear crops up and paralyses the trader not making him to open up any position. Hence while trading, the trader should not override the emotional side of trading, stick to discipline of the trade which can prevent them from committing the flaw of forex trading.

Another kind of flaw can happen when the trader is an unconcerned person or the one who is lazy, or with no drive to gain profits or feels the need to be profitable. These people would have entered into forex trading due to hearing it as an easy game. For them it is not a trade which involves skill, trade management, preparation and re-investment. It is a fun game for them, where loses do not make any difference to them. Such persons make a wrong footing, with a wrong objective.

Flaws in forex trading due to the inadequate knowledge of the trader:

Some of the losers start with good purpose in the trade. Even though they had gained some knowledge from here and there they might find it difficult to apply them practically in the trade. Inadequate knowledge might be the major flaw which stops them from achieving success.

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Forex Profits by buying and selling at the same time?

This article is one of a series which looks at the advantages and weaknesses of trading using the hedged, grid trading system to trade volatile markets.

We will look at how money can be made by breaking a number of trading truths or principles; * cut your losses and let your profit run and * there is nothing to gained by entering into buy and sell deals at the same time.

The hedged grid trading system uses the principle that one should be able to cash in at a gain no matter which way the market moves. No stops are therefore required at all. The only way this is logically possible is that one would have a buy and sell active at the same time. Most traders will say that that is trading suicide but let’s take some to look at this more closely.

Let’s say that a trader enters the market with a buy and sell active when a currency is at a level of say 100. The price then moves to 200. The buy will then be positive by 100 and the sell will be negative by 100. At this point we start breaking trading rules. We cash in our positive buy and the gain of 100 goes to our account. The sell is now carrying a loss of -100.

The grid system requires one to make sure that cash in on any movement in the market. To do this one would again enter into a buy and a sell transaction. Now, for convenience, let’s assume that the price moves back to level 100.

The second sell has now gone positive by 100 and the second buy is carrying a loss of -100. According to the rules one would cash the sell in and another 100 will be added to your account. That brings the total cashed in at this point to 200.

Now the first sell that remained active has moved from level 200 where it was -100 to level 100 where it is now breaking even.

The 4 transactions added together now magically show a gain:- 1st buy cashed in +100, 2nd sell cashed in +100, 1st sell now breaking even and the 2nd buy is -100. This gives an overall a gain of 100 in total. We can liquidate all the transactions and have some champagne.

There are many, many other market movements that turn this strange “buy and sell at the same time” activity into gains. These will be covered in future articles and are covered in a free grid trading course which is available at the expert-4x.com website for those traders whose curiosity has been aroused.

There will be more on the hedged grid trading articles to be issued regularly. Please watch this site.

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How to choose smart Stop Loss in Forex Trading

Here is step by step guide:

1. If price is close to recent high or low then place SL 5-10 pips above or below that point. This is very important. Prices do go back to test recent highs and lows and we need to set SL as per the recent price action. Trading on daily chart is bit tricky where such SL can be even 30-40 pips more on top of your static 100 pip SL.

2. Another point to take care is that don’t place SL on important boundary numbers such as 00 or 50 mark. These points are tested often and you can easily be stopped out.

3. Place your stop loss on odd numbers excluding 1 and 9. Never place SL on even numbers.


Believe It or Not!!!

Let me surprise some of you by saying that Brokers HUNT for your SL. That’s true. Forex is unlike Dow where everything is run by one organization and prices don’t vary from broker to broker (those broker makes money by giving you a worse fill than you would expect + commissions). Brokers in Forex can manipulate prices as they like and hence they go after your SL.

Now why brokers will want to you to loose?? Well every time you open a position, a broker opens an opposite position. So when you loose they win. They also want you trade more often, since they make money either in commission or spreads (or both). The only way they can force you to trade again is to stop you out.

Why you think brokers give out free market research and trading ideas?? If all of their traders are trading the same way then it is easier for them to take them out.

I am sure that some people would disagree (the ones working for broker J ) but it is something to think about.

So How To Beat The Brokers:

Simple, don’t place any Stop Loss. That’s right. It is not a typo. What you need is a Mental SL. You should know at price you will take your losses and set up alarms on your trading station when the price reach close to the mental SL you had in place. This can be challenging for some people but if you are lucky enough to get this working then there is nothing like it.

Hope this helps you in placing better SL from now on.

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